


some distant century

by curiositykilled



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Abandoned Work - Unfinished and Discontinued, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Horror, Mentions of Other Voltron Paladins, Mentions of past genocide, Post-Season/Series 02, Shiro (Voltron) is Missing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-21
Updated: 2020-10-21
Packaged: 2021-03-09 07:26:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,439
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27129889
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/curiositykilled/pseuds/curiositykilled
Summary: She stops, fingers tightening into a fist."It was not a quick death."Pidge can't make out her face from here. She's turned too fully to the nearly-empty shelves, the new life half-made before them. It's a long moment before Pidge finally lets herself ask the question she wants."Why?"Allura finally lifts her hand to the shelf. It stops just shy of the dried flower."For Voltron."
Relationships: Allura & Coran & Hunk & Keith & Lance & Pidge | Katie Holt & Shiro
Kudos: 4
Collections: Good Intentions: Abandoned and Unfinished WIPs





	some distant century

**Author's Note:**

> if you didn't read the tags/collection: **_THIS IS AN ABANDONED/UNFINISHED WORK_** ahem
> 
> title from "Skulls" by Bastille

Keith is the first to find them.

He disappears often these days, seeking out solitude in a desperate way that he didn’t before Shiro – before.

He is always present when they need the Black Paladin but when they need Keith, when they need their teammate to simply be among them, he vanishes.

It irritates Lance, drives him to bitter rants and even the occasional yelling match. Sometimes, he goes to the training deck and they don’t see him for an hour or two until he returns with growing bruises and a tired slump to his shoulders.

Pidge wonders, sometimes, how much the lions change their paladins to fit them. Green often nudges her then, a quiet mental pull. On better days, she’ll simply reply with a small sweep of curiosity that Green latches onto like a string. On worse ones, she will shut down and lock the lion out.

For all her curiosity, though, Pidge doesn’t wander the castle often. She lingers in the hangar, tucked in the palisade-like claws of Green. If pressed, she’d have to admit that there’s little benefit to using it rather than her own room or one of the labs Coran has shown them. But there are nights where she doesn’t want to be with people but doesn’t want to be alone. There are nights when another person’s voice makes her skin crawl and her temper spike from zero to three hundred in less time than it takes for her to snap back at the speaker. She can retreat to her room, hole up in the secure walls and locked door, but then the silence starts creeping in. It comes like ants, crawling up her legs and filling her mind with too many buzzing thoughts that itch and creep through her. It’s better with Green there, who seems to apply a buffer between her and those many-legged thoughts.

The labs themselves unnerve her in a way she isn’t quite willing to examine. They are neat and sterile, the kind she would have drooled over back home. But even with the professionalism apparent in every inch of them, she can never quite forget that these were once someone else’s. Someone else stood where she does, reached out for the tool she now holds. It’s as if their ghosts remain, leaving invisible prints over everything they touched. She’d take the intrusive thoughts of her own room over their haunting any day.

So it’s in the hangar that Keith finds her when he comes. She looks up as the door whooshes open and he clatters in. He’s still in the black undersuit they all wear, but he’s removed his bracers and helmet. The red chestplate is still attached, his hair mussed and flattened in the back.

“Pidge,” he says.

There’s a quality to his voice that she doesn’t hear outside of missions, and it makes her straighten up, take notice. Her hands still on the tablet, ready to shove it aside and climb into Green’s waiting seat.

“What’s wrong?” she asks.

Keith hesitates. He licks his bottom lip, flicks his gaze around the room as if looking for attackers.

“Have you explored the castle?” he asks.

Pidge falters, hands going limp in surprise. The castle? What does it matter?

“Uh, no,” she says.

There’s a long beat, where Keith stands wire-tight and tense.

“Why?” she finally asks.

Keith hesitates again. He runs a hand back through his hair, pushing it into sweaty spikes that slowly crumple back down to stick to his forehead. She stares, waits.

“It’s – it’s nothing,” he finally says. “Sorry. I just – I just spooked myself I guess.”

“Ookay,” she says slowly.

He looks like there’s more, like words are itching at the back of his throat, but he swallows them down. He doesn’t make a move to leave yet. Pidge holds out for a few more minutes before relenting. She knows it’s ridiculous, knows that it’s every paladin’s duty to watch out for each other and that it isn’t a burden to care. On a normal day, it wouldn’t be a problem. But she’s exhausted. She just wants the quiet of the hangar, the lull of the castle’s constant buzz and Green’s low purr. She doesn’t want to have to ask. She doesn’t want to have to be considerate.

“Are you okay?” she asks.

Keith jerks a little at that, as if startled.

“Of course,” he lies. “I’m fine. Good night, Pidge.”

He turns on his heel to leave, but there’s a beat before he actually takes a step. The doors hush closed behind him. She stares at the still doors for a few more moments before turning back to her work. Suddenly, it isn’t appealing anymore. Dropping the tablet to the floor, she leans back to press her back against Green’s claw. There’s a rumble of concern from the lion, heavy and metallic as it thrums through its armor and her bones.

“I’m okay,” Pidge lies. “I’m just tired.”

It’s stupid to try lying to the lion, she knows. Their minds are interconnected in a way that prevents any true deceit on her part. She doesn’t particularly care. If nothing else, the lion seems smart enough to understand that there is a reason she would try to lie and to guess at what that reason might be.

She settles in there, staring through the claw across from her and doesn’t exactly fall asleep but doesn’t exactly stay awake. She is there, eyes wide and dry, but her mind disappears into a cocoon of static, an electric safety blanket.

She doesn’t think more about Keith’s strange intrusion until a few weeks later. They’re planetside, gathering supplies for their next excursion and recuperating from the battle they fought two days ago. Coran is out with Keith now, making a good gesture of political friendliness to the natives. Allura is showing Hunk to the castle’s library, and she and Lance are left together.

“Let’s explore,” he says before she can offer an alternative.

He’s on his feet, moving out the door, by the time she gives in and follows. He’s nearly buzzing with extra energy, pent up without a good escape. It’s exhausting, sometimes, to be around that much vibration. She wonders if Red brings it out or if it’s the stress, the loss and the trauma none of them have time to process.

They make their way down the main corridor for a time until Lance hangs a sudden right. Pidge nearly trips over herself in an effort to follow, but Lance doesn’t seem to notice.

The doors here are the same as all the ones they’ve passed before. Cold metal with neat diagonals of glowing cyan. A few have other markers, words in Altean that Pidge can’t read yet. She’s working on it, but there’s a long way to go. They don’t open these.

Instead, Lance takes a left at the next fork and then another right and then another. Pidge keeps careful track of the turns they’ve made, of distinguishing features at each. The castle is a looming ribcage of extra hallways and hidden rooms. It’s the last place she wants to be lost in. The feeling that comes from the labs lingers more strongly here, a sense-memory of other lives and other people.

They come to a dead-end with a new style of door placed into the wall. It’s larger than the others, and the designs are less streamlined. They form geometric swirls, right angles mimicking the movement of waves and the twist of tree branches. Two of the words carved in the center of the door are familiar: ‘temple’ and ‘death.’ Her hair slowly stands on end.

“Wanna check it out?” Lance asks.

No. She doesn’t. She can feel her skin crawling with the thought of it. This is a place they should not breach, she thinks. This is a mausoleum to the past.

“Why not,” she says and steps forward.

The door slides up into its frame and a second beyond it does so in the opposite direction. They step forward quietly as if there could be an enemy anywhere inside.

There isn’t anyone inside. Pidge knows it shouldn’t be a surprise, but it’s still somehow jarring to walk in and find no one. Instead, there is a slender column of water hanging between the ceiling and floor. Around it are hexagonal blocks that start off perhaps ten inches tall and rise to nearly eight feet. Lance steps towards it, as if entranced. His eyes don’t stray from the water even as Pidge starts scanning the rest of the room.

On either side of the fountain, down the length of the room, there are slim columns arching up to the vaulted ceiling. They have the same low blue lights along their bases as do the ones throughout the castle. If she squints, she can almost make out the junction of each column with the ceiling. On the far side of both rows of columns is an open area with fine sharp lines marked through the floor. She walks towards them, keeping an eye out for Lance.

Passing through the line of columns, Pidge finds herself in the space between two semi-opaque curtains that stretch from the ground to somewhere far above. Both are an iridescent purple-blue, shimmering like dragonfly wings. She can’t hear Lance, but when she glances back, she finds him still studying the water. She turns forward again and takes a step into the quiet shadows.

The grooves in the floor here are straight and dark, and she can’t help wondering how far they go. Are they only shallow channels or do they cross-sect the entire castle? She steps over them carefully and imagines she feels cold air slipping up from within them. When she reaches the nearest curtain, she reaches her hand out tentatively.

The cloth is slippery, soft in a way that doesn’t feel quite natural. She rubs it between her fingertips to try to get a better qualification of it, but a static shock jolts up her arm and she flinches away. The curtain falls back into place and doesn’t sway. She rubs at her arm a moment, flexes her fingers. The skin still tingles.

She reaches out again, but this time, she only moves the curtain out of the way. It goes with an elastic willingness; the bottom seems heavily settled to the floor, but the center bends away for her to slip through. Once she’s on the other side, it returns to its previous position in the same way it first had. She stares at it a moment longer before turning to look around.

This space seems nearly identical to the previous; the same curtain hangs before her as behind, and the opening between the two columns permits her a view of the central aisle. Lance is walking slowly around the outside of the hexagons now, running his fingertips over their edges gingerly. She moves forward.

The next space is the same, and the next, and the next. She’s about ready to give up and return to the center chamber when she passes through a final curtain and freezes.

This room is not like the others. There is a circular depression in the center, around which are low benches not unlike those in the lounge they frequent. There’s a central table of sorts on top of which is a rounded form. Pidge steps down into the depression and wanders closer to the table. She brushes her fingertips against it and they come away with a fine layer of dust. She rubs it off on the side of her leggings and crosses to the other side of the depression.

There’s a table of sorts here, formed into the wall with a bench just before it. A sink-like bowl is set into the table, and Pidge startles at half-familiar shapes sitting beside it. A hair brush lies bristles-up. A smaller version of the form on the center table is set against the back of the apparent vanity. There’s a small button on the front of it, and she pokes it out of curiosity.

A hologram flickers into view. An Altean adult with dark skin and lavender cheekmarks is caught mid-laugh, arms flexed in a strongman pose. From each arm hangs a child; one with the adult’s skin tone and bright orange marks and the other with purple skin and glowing yellow eyes. Both are grinning at the camera.

Pidge hits the button quickly, and the hologram disappears. She steps back from the table and nearly trips over the drop into the depression. She twists to catch herself and bolts. There’s something caught in her lungs, a heavy, fog-like feeling that threatens her with nausea.

It’s not that she doesn’t know other people used to live here. Of course they did. She feels it all the time in the labs, and Allura and Coran occasionally slip up when they talk about Altea, using the present tense or names that no one else knows.

There’s something different about this, though. Something more immediate about a family picture and a hairbrush with strands still caught in the bristles than a sterile lab. She hurries out of the curtain and collides with Lance’s chest. He catches her and steadies her by her upper arms.

“Pidge!” he says. “Where were you? I’ve been calling you for ages and I couldn’t find you anywhere.”

His fingertips dig into her arms, almost painful. The vestiges of panic linger in his too-wide eyes and tight jaw.

“I…” Pidge trails off. Calling for her? She hadn’t heard anything. “I was just checking out the room back there. I didn’t hear you.”

His gaze passes her shoulder, flits back to the curtain just behind. He frowns. Pidge can feel gooseflesh pebbling up her arms before he even speaks.

"But...that's just a curtain."

He looks down to her, as if for clarification. Pidge pulls away, rubs her arms where he'd been holding as if to chase away the shiver that prickles just under her sleeves.

"Yeah. Well," she says, as if she'll find words to explain it when she doesn't have any. "Must just be the acoustics."

She starts walking away, back to the center chamber. It takes a minute or so before she can hear his footsteps following, hushed in the quiet of the temple.

They leave without another word, leave the water and the columns and the hairbrush behind the sealed doors. The image lingers in Pidge’s mind; the adult and two children, laughing and dead. If Lance tells anyone, she doesn’t hear about it.

Every once in a while over the next few weeks, she wanders down the corridors, always alone. She doesn’t seek out the temple again. 

She finds other rooms instead. At first, they’re all empty. The blankets are rolled neat and tight in little pyramids at the foots of the beds, the walls free of any decoration. They have the same sterile feeling as a hotel room in a brand new building – as if she is the first person to step inside, the first to run her fingers over their counters and drawers.

Then, slowly, the former lives start trickling in. She opens a room and finds a set of plates arranged on a table, as if they had just been set out. There is no hint of food left on their porcelain surfaces, but there is an air of expectation in the napkin, half-folded, that sits beside one and the three glasses paired with their plates.

She enters another to find clothing thrown about. It’s strewn across the room in a mess of colors, as if someone was packing in a rush and didn’t have time to tidy up after themselves. When she picks her way through the mess, she finds two sizes of everything. Two people, then. She doesn’t find a picture here. Perhaps it was already packed away.

The next opens first into a lounge similar to that which the paladins use. There are other doors leading further into the chambers.

The living room is neatly made, no personal items left out on any surface. It’s almost sterile. As she passes through it, Pidge can nearly convince herself it’s only a spare room, one no one lived in. As she reaches out for the first door, she’s thinking of how the paladins could use it for refugees or guests.

Then, the door opens.

“Oh,” she says, like an idiot.

The walls here are plastered with temporary decorations. Crude drawings of bright magenta flowers, a rolling green plain. They look like they were drawn in chalk or some other soft material. The bed is round and messy - sheets kicked partially aside and slipping down to the floor. They're the same pink as the flowers in the drawings on the wall. There are toys littered across the room. A round plushie that looks similar to how Hunk and Keith described the Weblum. A miniaturized version of Voltron itself.

It's a child's room.

"I didn't" - Pidge cuts herself off. Why wouldn't there be children on the castle? Complete annihilation of a planet leaves little room for sparing children.

She lingers on the threshold, as if stepping inside would break some sacred tranquility. A step or two from the door is a blanket, small and worn as if it had once lain in a crib and then been carted around everywhere as the child grew older. Acid burns at the base of Pidge’s throat.

She backs away from the room, though it’s difficult to pull her eyes from it. Only once the door has hushed closed does she turn to the others. The one closest to the child's room has the same look of being hastily left: a larger, more solemnly toned bed has sheets flung aside and pillows nearly on the floor. A single shoe lays on its side two steps from the door. Its partner is nowhere to be seen.

The last door opens into an office of sorts. Two desks, a few shelves, and a hologram base stand inside. The shelves are nearly empty save for a few artifacts: a pink flower, pressed and dried, rests on one.

She leaves the rooms on tiptoe, holding her breath until the outer door closes behind her with a quiet sigh.

She doesn't start walking immediately. Instead, she pauses outside the door and stares across the hall, through the wall on the other side.

There were children here.

Once upon a time, there was at least one child living on this castle ship. Parents, too, if the second bedroom is anything to go by.

She releases a shuddering breath and slides down the wall to sit crunched against it. What happened to them? Where did they go? These lives, once lived, are clearly gone. The rooms she just visited spoke of haste, of leaving without time to prepare. Where did they go? What caused it?

She can't imagine that the Altean royalty - that Allura and Alfor and Coran - made them get out of the castle when Zarkon attacked Altea. It seems impossible, too cruel and heartless to match the woman she's come to respect as her leader. Surely they wouldn't.

But if that isn't the case, it begs the question of what these people were doing on the ship to begin with. Until now, until the temple, she'd thought only Allura and Coran escaped on the ship. That, perhaps, Alfor had shuttled them away in a last ditch effort to keep those most precious to him safe.

Who were the others, then? Were they family, too? Allura's cousins and aunts and uncles?

Were they friends? Servants?

She is left answerless, with only questions ringing in her mind. It makes her stomach turn uneasy, a twisting feeling that seeks purchase only to find emptiness.

Pidge forces herself to her feet and stumbles down the hall. She doesn't like not knowing. It's a character flaw, perhaps. Once upon a time, Matt called her out on her "know it all" personality, but it persists nonetheless. It's what got her into this in the first place. She knew "pilot error" wasn't the reason her brother and dad went missing without any sign of a crash or other accident. She just didn't know what could possibly be the real reason.

And from there, it was a rockslide of poking around and finding leads that led her to here, to now, to stumbling through an alien craft terrified of the unknowns around the aliens that once lived here, too.

She runs into Keith. It probably shouldn't surprise her.

He startles, hands coming up defensively, but he relaxes as soon as he realizes it's her.

"Oh. Pidge," he says. "Hey."

"Hi," she says weakly.

She stares at him a moment, and he stares back. She's reminded, abruptly, of weeks earlier, when he came skidding into the hangar.

"Keith," she says, "have you explored the castle?"

He blanches suddenly, turning a spectacularly pale shade of white. It's more than answer enough when she was already sure.

"What did you find?" she presses. "Did you find the rooms? What do you know?"

She doesn't realize she's pressed him to a wall until she falls silent and discovers his hands are up again, protecting himself. Dropping her shoulders forcibly, Pidge takes an intentional step backwards.

"Sorry," she mumbles.

She means it, mostly. She doesn't mean to come across as aggressive as she sometimes does. Mom talked to her about throughout her childhood, reminded her that she was Special and that other kids couldn't always keep up. It wasn't their fault, Mom would say, it was just that Pidge's mind worked faster than everyone else's. She'd say it with a fond little smile and ruffle Pidge's hair no matter how many times she protested.

Now, Pidge reminds herself of it instead of waiting for the voice she knows won't come.

"It's okay," Keith says.

He pauses and leans away from the wall he's pressed himself into. He looks down at his gloves and adjusts them, tightening the velcro just-so on each one.

"I..." He stops, swallows. "I found rooms. I don't know anything about it though."

"Where?"

Pidge stops herself from leaning forward with her intent, but she knows her hunger is still blatant. She has to know, even if she can't exactly say why it's so important. She needs this, needs to understand what's been hidden in this castle's shadows and cracks. There are secrets here, and she cannot stand secrets. Not when they're not hers to know and hoard.

"Down that way," Keith says, gesturing towards a hallway two down from the one Pidge just exited.

She narrows her eyes, squinting at the opening as if just looking hard enough will tell her what she wants to know. It doesn't, of course.

"What'd you find there?" she asks.

Keith shrugs, expression turning from defense into confusion.

"Rooms?" he says, uncertain. "Just...rooms. I guess from before Altea was destroyed."

"Why?" Pidge asks.

They're probably more bedrooms, she knows, just like the apartments she herself has discovered.

"There are videos and stuff," Keith says. "Of Altea."

Pidge freezes. Videos. She twists around to face him.

"Show me."

He falters a little at her assertiveness, but when it becomes clear she's intent on this, he relents. He walks a little less confidently than he usually does. Behind him, Pidge can't help wondering at how narrow his shoulders seem. He's barely a year older than her, she knows - young for his grade. He seems too thin for the weight they've placed on him, the heavy mantle not only of leader but of Shiro's old role.

She hasn't considered it much, before, how Shiro's legacy might affect him. Although it's been clear from the get-go that those two were somehow closer than all the rest of them, she's never paid it much mind. It's not a secret she's interested in, because she knows it's mundane. They probably met while Shiro was still in the garrison, in the honors mentor program or something. It's a typical story of hero-worship and guidance, she's always been sure.

Now, she's not so certain. Keith had known Shiro, and Shiro had read Keith better than any of the rest of them could even attempt. She frowns, berating herself a little for not paying better heed to that mystery right under her nose.

It's not as pressing as this one, as the ghosts in the castle, but that doesn't mean it doesn't deserve its own investigation. She presses it temporarily into the back of her mind, with a dogeared edge to remind herself to pull it out later for examination.

Now, Keith leads her down the blue-lit hallway and stops in front of a door. He hesitates, fingers curled to his palm, for a moment before reaching up and opening the door. He doesn't enter immediately, instead lets Pidge slide around him and into the room.

It's not immediately clear what the purpose of the room is. There are low benches and wide screens around it. It looks almost like a miniaturized version of the command room, but there are no wide bay windows, and the set-up isn't nearly so military. It's almost like a theatre of sorts.

Pidge squints, trying to decipher its purpose, for a moment longer before giving up and moving towards one of the screens. She can hear Keith enter behind her, feet dragging a little on the metal floor.

She presses a random button on the screen, a round blue one that looks promising. The screen flickers and then splits into cyan light, just like the holograms seen around the castle.

This one remains blue only a moment. Rapidly, the screen darkens to a midnight blue. In the center appear cyan letters that Pidge recognizes as Altean but can't actually read. She hasn't had much chance to work on improving her comprehension of the alien language, not recently. There's just been so much else that's more urgent, more necessary now. Another box for her future to-do list, then.

She steps back so that the backs of her legs press against one of the low benches. The screen rolls through several lines of the cyan text, the background remaining a near-black blue. Slowly, it starts to lighten. First purple, then a peachy-red start fading in from the bottom of the screen. A voice begins to speak.

"Morning dawns on Planet Altea," the narrator says. "Twin suns - [fudge some names] - rise together as the stars recede. Dawn is the most beautiful time of day on this rocky planet."

Pidge sits down slowly, and after a moment, Keith joins her. Together, they sit and watch as the movie roves over a rocky, mountainous planet. All the while the narrator continues to describe the notable features of the planet - its cloud-scraping mountains and lush fields of juniberries. Rain on Altea, it turns out, contains not water but meteors. They streak from the sky in burning rays that crash into the ground and leave brutal craters behind. It becomes apparent, somewhere along the way, that they're watching a documentary.

It seems a strange thing to keep in the castle. Surely, the royal family had a decent grasp of the planet they ruled. _Of course_ , Pidge thinks, _that wasn't always true of the leaders of Earth_. She can remember learning about the disastrous events following some nearly-ancient elections in the former United States. She shudders briefly at the thought of the ruin one election could cause for the environment, for society. Perhaps a documentary isn’t such a bad thing to have around.

The documentary draws to a gentle close, the horizon curving up to hide the twin suns in darkness and cool night. There are few clouds, the narrator explains, meaning the inhabitants of Planet Altea must be adaptable both to the searing temperatures of day and the plummeting ones of night.

She's making to get up when the credits stop. The text is white, fades in and disappears, but this one freezes in the middle, a pale blur on the black screen.

The letters come first, cyan and unreadable. Then, a new narrator begins.

"Altea was lost to us," they say, "when Zarkon's army attacked."

Pidge sits back down beside a suddenly-tense Keith.

"Our once-allies attacked in the night, wiping out our defenses before moving onto civilians. Our army was unprepared for an attack from Galra," they say. "They could not withstand the blow."

They go on. In each word, Pidge hears a quiet kind of rage, one that quivers just beneath the surface. There is hate there, hate and grief all raw-edged and red, but it is carefully concealed within a coating of professionalism. She wonders at that, at how tightly-wound the new narrator sounds.

When they finally finish, a new image flashes onto the screen. A group of people - all alien - all in old-fashioned armor. She recognizes them by colors only. It's the yellow paladin that's speaking, she realizes. The rest stand behind them with stern expressions and crossed arms. They make no move to interrupt.

"We, the remaining paladins of Voltron, will stand between those who survived and the Galra Empire until we can no longer," they say. "We have pledged our lives to safeguard yours."

They fall quiet, and the image fades. The credits from the documentary resume once more, but she isn't really watching.

She stares through the screen, unseeing. The paladins - their predecessors. She's never seen them before, never gotten more than the most reluctant word from Allura on their existence. To see them now, in full color and breath, is jarring.

The armor they'd seen looked like Alfor's AI, back before it corrupted. The exaggerated paldrons, the medieval cuirasses and guards. But the paladins themselves - the people wearing that armor - had looked exhausted. They’d worn tired circles and strained lines on their faces like they'd been fighting this war for longer than any of them had planned to be alive.

She goes back over their faces in her mind, running through each as if she'll be able to gather more information from her memory of that brief clip. She doesn't find much, just more questions. Where did the scar across the yellow paladin's face come from? Why the tight press of the blue's lips? Why did the green have their arm in a sling? Where was the red paladin?

She's only broken from this cycle by a firm hand on her shoulder. She looks up to find Keith watching her worriedly.

"Hey," he says. "You okay there?"

Pidge swallows and nods.

"I just" - she breaks off and shakes her head - "I just didn't expect to see the old paladins, I guess."

Keith's face softens in an expression of understanding, his eyebrows lifting a little and worried frown fading.

"Oh," he says. "Me neither. I didn't watch that far, I guess."

Pidge isn't wholly surprised. As secretive as Keith can be, it seems like the kind of thing he'd share - accidentally or not. Surely, if he'd known, it would have come up with Allura.

"What do you think they were like?" she asks before she can stop herself.

"The paladins?" Keith pauses, frown returning. "I don't know. Brave, I guess."

It's not really what she was asking, but Pidge accepts it anyway. She stands, then, and moves toward the screen.

"Isn't it weird that they'd have that video for just Allura and Coran?" she asks instead.

"I hadn't really thought about it," Keith admits, "but yeah."

Pidge fiddles with the controls until she finds something that looks vaguely like a main menu. Without comprehension of the language, it's difficult to navigate, but she's not the crack genius of their team for her lack of creativity. She persists until a new video starts.

It's clear from the start that this one is propaganda. The Galra are looming beasts, played by Altean actors, Pidge is sure. What clips don't seem to be acted are shaky and slightly lower resolution, as if coming from security cameras. The devastation they record, however, is clear enough. Galra warships, Galra soldiers - all brutally raining hell onto the civilizations and civilians they target. It is stomach-turningly familiar, and she closes out of the video before they're very far in.

Documentaries, propaganda films - it's clear these weren't made for only the two Alteans they've met. Someone else was here, once upon a time. Pidge thinks back to the rooms she's found, the children's toys and the unmade beds. She frowns, and turns slightly towards Keith. He's watching her curiously, as if waiting on her to lead.

"Has Allura ever talked about other Alteans living on the ship?" she asks.

It seems plausible, maybe. Refugees or other survivors of the attack seeking protection in the high-tech ship of the royalty. Based on Allura's sense of duty, it doesn't seem too far-fetched to imagine she would open those doors to protect those under her charge.

But then, where did they go?

The older ones, the adults or elderly who reached the ship, could certainly have died by now. But the children, the ones Allura's age or younger - what would stop them from continuing on? Arus showed no signs of colonization. There were no hints of other Alteans around.

Pidge shakes her head and pulls out her tablet.

"I'm going to save some of these," she says to Keith. "It's a good resource."

He accepts her explanation without question, doesn't ask what she needs it for. She doesn't really want to lie to him, probably wouldn't if he asked her, but there's something here she wants to keep guarded. She's never liked showing her inventions before they're finished, and she's no readier to show this unsolved mystery until she has it down lock and key.

She finishes transferring the files over, and they leave together.

Their walk is quiet, a little stilted.

"Are those the only rooms you explored?" she asks eventually.

Keith shrugs. "I was just looking for some place quiet. I got...a little spooked, I guess."

Pidge frowns but lets it go. They've never swapped life stories, and she doesn't see that coming now. An explanation from Keith is a rare thing, usually terse and lacking in details. She doesn't press for one.

They part ways and Pidge stops by her room before going to the hangar. Green perks up a little as she enters, though the mechanical lion doesn't move. It's just a gentle press at the back of Pidge's mind, curiosity espoused by Pidge's own.

"I might need your help," Pidge admits, gazing up at the ship.

The lions have their own memories, she's pretty sure. They have enough sentience and autonomy to be more than the high-tech spaceships they seem. She's just not sure what is under that metal, what makes them able to move on their own and make their own choices. It concerns her how little she understands them, but she's been forced to make some amount of peace with that. She'll get there, if she lives long enough.

For now, she settles down in her spot between Green's claws and pulls out the tablet and her headphones. She starts the video again, skimming forward to the paladins' clip. She pauses and rewinds frequently, jotting down notes as she does. There's information here, she knows.

It's in the missing black amongst their bright armor. It's in the hard lines of their eyes and the twitchiness of the blue paladin – an unfamiliar race of alien, with a face not meant for such worried eyes. The green and yellow flank the blue, opposites in size and shape. All of them stand in a tight formation, as if guarding one another. The two absences in their rank are conspicuous and leave the remaining paladins somehow diminished, as if missing part of themselves.

When she's finished analyzing the first clip, she moves on to a third one that they hadn't watched in the room. It's difficult, at first, to discern its purpose.

•••

[Alt version of previous scene]

It's not till another few weeks later that it comes up again. This time, Pidge is walking down the corridor, focus on the tablet in her hands, when a rapid succession of thudding footsteps makes her look up. It's only this that saves both her and Hunk from landing on the floor in a mess of limbs.

"Holy shit," he swears, stumbling to a halt.

"Uh, hi?" Pidge says.

His eyes are wide, sweat beaded up by his brow. He looks eerily like Keith did that day, however many weeks ago. It's hard to keep track in space, when the darkness is constant and the light artificial.

"Pidge," Hunk says like a lifeline.

She stares at him, baffled. He stares back, chest heaving.

"You okay?" she asks finally.

"I" - he stops, looks back the way he came - "Have you explored much of the castle?"

Pidge shrugs, rapidly losing interest. It's not like she doesn't have enough to look for, what with her family somewhere tossed between Galra camps and mysterious rebels, and Shiro gone without even a hint. She doesn't need to explore the castle when she has enough unanswered mysteries crackling electric right at her fingertips.

"Not really," she says. "Why?"

Hunk reaches a hand back to tug off his headband and unknots it without looking down. It's a nervous tick, one she's noticed when he doesn't seem to. He pulls it back into place, tucks a rebel strand of hair under its edge.

"I...found something," he says slowly.

Pidge raises an eyebrow and waits. After a moment's hesitation, Hunk gestures for them to go back the way he came. He walks a little cautiously, but his steps grow stronger the longer he's beside her.

"They're rooms," Hunk explains. "Private ones, I guess. I'm not sure why I didn't think about them. I mean, people must have lived here before. It's awfully big for just two."

Pidge nods, but she can't help fighting a growing sense of unease. It feels like the temple all over, just a little less clear. She doesn't want to see whatever's been left behind by those who used to live here. She knows without looking that there are remnants of them everywhere they walk - in the very walls of the castle and the shape of the designs in the floors.

"You didn't find bodies, did you?" she asks.

Hunk's body shudders with a whole-body flinch.

"Bodies?" he squeaks. "Uh, no. Jeez. A little morbid there?"

Pidge shrugs. If Allura and Coran don't speak of the Altea-that-was much, they speak of the Altea-that-became-undone less. They know very little about what happened to caused the planet to send their princess and one aid out into the void of space with only a castle. It seems possible that it could have affected the ship, too. Why else would Allura and Coran be stashed in cryotubes while they sat entombed in the castle?

They turn a corner, and Hunk hesitates a moment longer before pressing the open button on one of the doors. It slides open with a quiet sigh, and Pidge is immediately hit with an unfamiliar smell. Soft, vaguely sweet - like lilies or lavender or the taste of cream soda bubbling on her tongue.

Inside is a living room of sorts, similar both to the paladins' lounge and to the one in the temple. There are other doors leading further into the chambers. Pidge reaches out quickly, before she can compose herself, and grabs Hunk's wrist.

"Let's stick together," she says.

He seems briefly taken aback but doesn't hesitate to move his hand so that it wraps around her own. In his broader palm, her hand looks skinny and pale, and she hates the feeling of weakness that comes from holding a larger person's hand. She's not a child, she shouldn't be scared of closed doors. They're meant to open, and she will be the one to do it.

They walk together through the living room, rolling toe-heel. She's not sure whether it's because of any possible intruders laying in wait or if it's out of reverence.

The living room is neatly made, no personal items left out on any surfaces. It's almost sterile. Pidge can convince herself as they pass through it that it's merely a spare room, one no one lived in. As they reach out for the first door, she's thinking of how the paladins could use it for refugees or other aliens displaced by the Galra's imperial conquests.

Then, the door opens.

"Oh," she says, like an idiot.

"Yeah," Hunk agrees.

The walls here are plastered with temporary decorations. Crude drawings of bright magenta flowers, a rolling green plain. They look like they were drawn in chalk or some other soft material. The bed is round and messy - sheets kicked partially aside and slipping down to the floor. They're the same pink as the flowers in the drawings on the wall. There are toys littered across the room. A round plushie that looks similar to how Hunk and Keith described the Weblum. A miniaturized version of Voltron itself.

It's a child's room.

"I didn't" - Pidge cuts herself off. Why wouldn't there be children on the castle? Complete annihilation of a planet leaves little room for sparing children.

"Me neither," Hunk says anyway.

Neither one makes a move to step into the room. They linger on the threshold, as if stepping inside would break some sacred tranquility. A step or two from the door is a blanket, small and worn as if it had once lain in a crib and then been carted around everywhere as the child grew older. Acid burns at the base of Pidge's throat.

"Should we neaten it up?" she asks.

Hunk chews on his bottom lip, looking all through the room. Finally, slowly, he shakes his head.

"No," he says. "I think - I think we should let them rest."

He pulls her gently away from the door, and they set to opening the others. The one closest to the child's room has the same look of being hastily left: a larger, more solemnly toned bed has sheets flung aside and pillows nearly on the floor. A single shoe lays on its side two steps from the door. Its partner is nowhere to be seen.

The last door opens into an office of sorts. Two desks, a few shelves, and a hologram base stand inside. The shelves are nearly empty save for a few artifacts: a pink flower, pressed and dried, rests on one.

They leave the rooms on tiptoe and don't speak till they've reached the hallway.

"I think," Hunk says slowly," that we should get the others maybe."

"Yeah," Pidge says with a nod. "Just - after one more."

He looks like he'll argue for a minute, but he finally relents.

"Just one," he says as they turn to the one across the hall.

This one has little if anything in common with the other. The first room is flat and open, no furniture there except a Gladiator standing dormant in the corner. Hunk flinches when he first catches sight of it, nearly tugging Pidge over on the floor. Once they've ascertained that it isn't about to attack them, they begin exploring the room in earnest. For as empty as it seems, there are little hints of the former occupant tucked throughout. A neat roll of white handwraps. A staff like the kind Allura uses.

"Could almost be Keith's room," Pidge jokes.

It falls flat when Hunk blanches and doesn't laugh. She swallows down the regret. Whoever owned this room is dead. Who knows how quickly Keith or any of them will join this nameless Altean.

They don't linger in this room. The familiarity is too jarring. The bedroom portion is neat and well-kept, the bed made as tightly as those at the Garrison. There are no extraneous possessions here. They don't try opening the wardrobe or the bag zipped shut at the end of the bed. They turn and leave the way they'd entered.

"Want to get the others?" Pidge asks.

She doesn't, personally. She doesn't want to share this with them. It isn't hers, but the sticky-hollow feeling that clings to the backs of her ribs is. It's a kind of nausea she doesn't want others to see in her. She doesn't want to remind them that she's the youngest, even if only by a year. Logically, she knows they don't care; they see her as their equal and trust her as one. Illogically, she feels like a failure whenever she isn't the crack genius she's come to expect of herself.

"Yeah," Hunk says. "I think we better."

He looks over at her, then gives her hand a gentle squeeze.

"I think it's better if we don't keep this a secret," he says.

Pidge looks away.

"Yeah," she says. "Sure."

They make their way to the control room, not once letting go of each other's hand. Neither comments on it, and they don't let go as the doors slide open.

Allura's inside with Keith, both with crossed arms and a firm scowl. Between them is a cyan hologram, a map of sorts. Pidge can pick out planets they've been to by the familiar pattern of others around them, but she doesn't let her gaze linger long.

"Pidge? Hunk?" Keith asks, concern creeping into his voice.

"Is something wrong?" Allura asks.

They both drop their arms as they turn, Keith's sliding towards the knife holstered at his hip. Sometimes, Pidge thinks that the two of them are too similar, that they must be twin souls placed in different bodies. So ready to fight, so ready to die for what they believe in.

"We just found something," Hunk says. "It's not a biggie, but we figured-"

"The private quarters," Pidge says.

Allura's face flickers into something raw and aching before steeling back over.

"Ah," she says. "Yes. I wondered..."

She trails off and shakes her head slightly. There's new tension around the corners of her mouth, like she's suppressing whatever emotion mention of the previous occupants brought to her. She turns back to the control panel and starts tapping away.

"I'll get Coran," is all she says.

Within a few minutes, everyone is assembled. There is a notable gap between where Keith stands and where the others are. It's not consciously done, Pidge knows, but she hurts at the reminder of their missing piece.

It calls to mind the empty rooms they've found and one that's been untouched for the past month. They don't open Shiro's room, don't break the seal of its door. It seems too much like a defeat, a surrender of the possibility that he's still out there. She pushes the thought away roughly.

They're all armed this time, though not with their typical weapons. Each carries a bag, ones Coran fabricated on one of the industrial machines down in a hidden supply cupboard. Hunk's eyes had grown wide with delight at the 3D printer before he remembered the solemnity of their task and sobered. Allura's knuckles are nearly pink where she grips the bag. Coran presses his shoulder surreptitiously to her own.

"Well," he says. "Shall we?"

They march together down the corridor, like an impromptu and mismatched army. When they get to the first door, Coran takes a steadying breath before pressing his palm flat to the switch. They file inside.

For the first few minutes, they are each quiet and still. The others seem to soak in the aura of the room, and Pidge wonders if they, too, can smell that honey-vanilla scent. No one mentions it.

"I think I will take care of the first bedroom," Coran says after a moment.

He doesn't move. Lance steps forward.

"I got it," he says and walks into the child's room.

The door slides shut behind him.

"I can get the other one," Keith says.

He pauses by Coran's side, hand hovering uncertainly just to the side of his shoulder. He rests it briefly on Coran's shoulder and then moves toward, disappearing into the adults' bedroom.

"I will take care of the study," Allura says crisply.

She strides forward with a regal bearing, shoulders square and flat and chin lifted just-so. Pidge's feet follow of their own accord.

"I'll help," she says as the door slides shut behind her.

Allura turns over her shoulder, a brief flash of vulnerability cracking through her facade. Her gaze turns quickly back to the shelves. It lingers on the flower, dried and stored there.

"Did you know them?" Pidge asks after a pause.

"Yes," Allura says.

She reaches out a hand, trails it over the desk.

"They were ambassadors," she says. "Hato and Alman. They had just returned from several years abroad. Their son was born a week after we left Altea."

Pidge bites her bottom lip, tightening her fingers in the bag's edge.

"What happened?" she asks.

Allura steps forward slowly. Her fingers trace over the edges of the desks, then the shelves.

"Haggar. She released a weapon among us," she says. "It was a virus of sorts, modified by the Druids' magic. It attacked individuals’ quintessence, corrupted it and used it to kill us one by one."

She speaks as if in a trance, a little distant and apart from the words she says. She stops in front of the shelf that contains the flower. She doesn't touch it, but her eyes don't move from it.

"The healing pods didn't fix it?" Pidge asks, even though she knows the answer.

Allura shakes her head. Her earrings dance through the motion, bright spots of violet in the white of her hair.

"We couldn't detect it," she says. "There was no way - no way of telling who was infected and who wasn't. Even once symptoms appeared, we could do nothing."

She stops, fingers tightening into a fist.

"It was not a quick death."

Pidge can't make out her face from here. She's turned too fully to the nearly-empty shelves, the new life half-made before them. It's a long moment before Pidge finally lets herself ask the question she wants.

"Why?"

Allura finally lifts her hand to the shelf. It stops just shy of the dried flower.

"For Voltron."

She picks up the flower gently, just her fingertips gripping the stem. As she pulls it away from the shelf, it crumbles into pink flecks on the dark shelf. She stops. A beat passes. She drops the remains into the bag.

They clean the rest of the room in silence, pulling the few possessions off the shelves and into the bags.

**Author's Note:**

> bb's early attempts at horror before i, y'know, actually got into it
> 
> this was the very first VLD fic i ever tried to write and then...I could not get past that one scene. and then VLD continued to disappoint me until i completely lost interest in it whoOPS


End file.
